THE ROAD TO HELL: Paul Levine: Amazon.com: Kindle Store: “The Road to Hell” collects four stories by Paul Levine, the Edgar-nominated author of the bestselling Jake Lassiter series. Levine's heroes travel dark and dangerous paths as they confront devilish and powerful villains. The journeys are by land, by sea, and in one case, perhaps only in the mind.

'Fringe' Duo Adapting 'Sleepy Hollow' for Fox: The duo's dramatic take on Sleepy Hollow is described as a modern-day supernatural thriller based on the 1820 short story in which Ichabod Crane partners with the town's local female sheriff to bring peace to a beleaguered community.

Friday, July 20, 2012

The Bastard Hand: Heath Lowrance: Amazon.com: Kindle Store: Charlie Wesley is not right in the head. He’s escaped from a mental hospital up north and hitchhiked his way south, the voice of his dead brother urging him on. But when Charlie hits Memphis, the fine line between his delusions and reality shift in the form of the Reverend Phineas Childe—a preacher bent on booze and women; a Man of God with a dark agenda. Charlie is the perfect pawn in the Reverend’s game of retribution. And the small North Mississippi town of Cuba Landing will be the setting for the Reverend’s very personal Apocalypse. . . .

King City: Lee Goldberg: Amazon.com: Kindle Store: Major Crimes Unit detective Tom Wade secretly worked with the Feds to nail seven of his fellow cops for corruption…turning him into a pariah in the police department. So he’s exiled to patrol a beat in King City’s deadliest neighborhood… with no back-up, no resources, and no hope of survival.

Now Wade fights to tame the lawless, poverty-stricken wasteland…while investigating a string of brutal murders of young women. It’s a case that takes him from the squalor of the inner-city to the manicured enclaves of the privileged, revealing the sordid and deadly ways the two worlds are intertwined…making his enemies even more determined to crush him.

I picked this book for only one reason: It's been on my shelves for decades, and I figured it was time I read it. As you might expect for a book published in 1957, the cover sensationalizes a story that's not sensational at all, but it's a pretty cool cover, so who cares?

When I started reading the book, I was a little surprised to see that it had an American setting. When I arrived at the end, I saw that Simenon was living at Shadow Rock Farm in Lakeview, Connecticut, when he wrote it. So I guess that explains the setting.

This is another of those older books that might not stand a chance of getting published today. The first twelve pages are all telling, without even a single line of dialogue. It's clearly building up to something, but it's hard to tell what that something is. Eventually we learn that the watchmaker's son, age 16, has taken the family car and a neighbor's daughter, age 15, and headed off for parts unknown.

Things don't go well for the son, however, and soon he's involved in robbery and murder. All this happens offstage, though. The book's not about that. It's about the father and how he comes to understand and accept what's happened. Depressing stuff. It's also about the media circus and American justice. (Aside: if Simenon thought there was media overkill in the middle '50s when this book was published, he should be around now when the kid would be getting interviewed on national TV by Sean Hannity.)

The ending is as downbeat as you'd expect. Not much hope for change or redemption here.

Old Gun Wolf: Frank Leslie: Amazon.com: Kindle Store: Ex-Confederate soldier, ex-Indian fighter, ex-train robber, ex-gunslinger...ex-father... Wilbur Calhoun just wants to run his little ranch in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado, a quiet place even at the turn-of-the-century. He wants to be left alone, just him and his collie dog, Shep. He wants to weather his last days in peace.

But then a rider comes after him at the head of a mountain snowstorm. That rider turns out to be Wilbur’s son, Devlin, whom Wilbur hasn’t seen since the boy was two years old. Devlin is a deputy U.S. marshal now, and he’s come to arrest his father for murder. But not just any murder. The murder of Devlin’s mother over twenty-five years ago in Tennessee...Wilbur Calhoun might be old and just want to live quietly and anonymously, but does that mean he’ll go to the hangman peacefully, even when escorted by his long-lost son?Remember, this is a Frank Leslie yarn!

The veteran actor passed away on Tuesday. Details of his death have not been released, but Paull was diagnosed with stomach cancer earlier this year.The actor, who also appeared in film classics "Patton" and "Norma Rae," played Holden in Ridley Scott's sci-fi hit and became the director's sidekick on set after suggesting he hire Daryl Hannah to play replicant Pris in the film and fire Sean Young.

The Washington Post: William Raspberry, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post whose fiercely independent views illuminated conflicts concerning education, poverty, crime and race, and who was one of the first black journalists to gain a wide following in the mainstream press, died July 17 at his home in Washington. He was 76.

AbeBooks: Vintage Travel Posters: It's hard to remember while deliberating between a grope and a scan, but travel used to be quite a glorious thing. By ship or by plane, by car or by train, the first half of the 20th century was a golden time for travel. To board an airplane, or even an ocean liner, was an elegant affair, and one for which a person would dress up and prepare. Back then, the journey really was a part of the adventure, more than just the means to an end.

The Hollywood Reporter: William Asher, who directed episodes of such classic TV shows as I Love Lucy and Bewitched, died Monday at a board and care facility in Palm Desert, Calif., according to the Desert Sun. He was 90.

Amazon.com: The Fear Artist (Poke Rafferty Thriller) (9781616951122): Timothy Hallinan: Books: "Edgar-finalist Hallinan’s heartrending, unforgettable fifth Poke Rafferty thriller" (Publishers Weekly starred review) set in Thailand comes to Soho CrimeAn accidental collision on a Bangkok sidewalk goes very wrong when the man who ran into Rafferty dies in his arms, but not before saying three words: Helen Eckersley. Cheyenne. Seconds later, the police arrive, denying that the man was shot. That night, Rafferty is interrogated by Thai secret agents who demand to know what the dead man said, but Rafferty can't remember. When he's finally released, Rafferty arrives home to find that his apartment has been ransacked. In the days that follow, he realizes he's under surveillance. The second time men in uniform show up at his door, he manages to escape the building and begins a new life as a fugitive. As he learns more about his situation, it becomes apparent that he's been caught on the margins of the war on terror, and that his opponent is a virtuoso artist whose medium is fear.

New Elvis Presley Recording Discovered: A new Elvis Presley recording has been discovered and played online and we have the video and audio for you. The song is I Forgot To Remember To Forget You from a Louisiana Hayride performance in 1955. The recording is said to be audio taped from a TV broadcast, just audio the actual film does not exist.

Burt Reynolds is something of a joke now, but he was a huge star in the '70s, and for good reason. This movie wasn't a hit, but Judy and I saw it in the theater, and we both loved it.

The setting is 1957, and Reynolds plays W. W., who's cruising the south in his great-looking Oldsmobile and robbing filling stations. Remember those? Anyway, in the course of his adventures, he steals the car belonging to a country band known as the Dixie Dancekings. While they're still in it. They go along with his robbery, and some more besides, because they're in dire need of money. Reynolds becomes their manager. The oil company whose stations Reynolds is robbing sends out ex-lawman Art Carney to put a stop to the depredations, and things get a bit complicated before they settle down to a happy and satisfying ending.

W. W. and the Dixie Dancekings has a great cast, including country stars Jerry Reed, Don Williams, and Mel Tillis. There's even a performance by bluesman Furry Lewis. The movie's fast and funny, and Reynolds is at the top of his game. If you've ever wondered why he was so big, see this one (or Gator or White Lightning or, for something entirely different, Deliverance). This one's right up there with 'em.

Wells was the most successful female singer of the 1950s, one of a small handful of women to have significant impact in country in an era when the music was overwhelmingly dominated by men.

“She was the undisputed queen of country music,” singer Marty Stuart said Monday. “There’s more to being a queen than just calling yourself a queen -- it’s a title that goes with an entire lifetime of service and influence. You check the careers of anyone in this town [of Nashville], and you won’t find anyone with a more spotless career than Kitty Wells.”

Amazon.com: Gold Under Ice (9780982782217): Carol Buchanan: Books: Money. Greenbacks vs. gold. The Lincoln administration prints greenbacks to pay for its war with the Confederacy, and on Wall Street a renegade money market known as the Gold Room pits the greenback against gold. By January 1864, the greenback loses nearly half its value. While far to the west, in Alder Gulch, Montana Territory, millions in gold lie under the ice of Alder Creek. Gold-seekers pray for spring. A lawyer from New York, Daniel Stark came West to get enough gold to rescue his family from the debt left by his father's embezzlement and suicide.

This GalleyCat editor will never forget the hours and hours he spent devouring this Edgar Award-winning mystery series. In addition to these books, Sobol also wrote the Two Minute Mystery series from 1959 until 1968. He launched Encyclopedia Brown in 1963, and the books are still available today from Penguin.

iWon News: Celeste Holm, a versatile, bright-eyed blonde who soared to Broadway fame in "Oklahoma!" and won an Oscar in "Gentleman's Agreement" but whose last years were filled with financial difficulty and estrangement from her sons, died Sunday, a relative said. She was 95.

Mobley's Law, A Mobley Meadows Novel: Gerald Lane Summers, Lesley K. Payne: Amazon.com: Kindle Store: Federal Governor, Edmund Jackson Davis, has ruled Texas with an iron fist since the end of the Civil War, but must now stand for election against a majority of citizens made up of ex-confederate sympathizers and soldiers. President Grant appoints Judge Mobley Meadows to the Texas Federal Circuit Court and charges him with preventing the situation from getting out of hand. Davis quickly realizes that Mobley is a threat when he overturns the Governor’s land reappraisal decree, a source of graft for Davis’s supporters, and sends his personal assassin to get rid of Mobley.

Okay, so what if Victor Frankenstein was lying to Captain Walton to cover up his own perverted crimes and the story that got passed on to Mary Shelley was all wrong? What if Frankenstein, besides being a scientist was heavily into the occult and had supernatural powers over the monster? What if Frankenstein were also in league with the Marquis de Sade, and what if he and the Marquis were planning to create a perverted drama with 200 kidnapped young women? Those are some of the ideas behind Dave Zeltserman's latest novel, in which the monster, whose name is Freidrich, by the way, tells his own version of the story.

And it's a whiz-bang version, indeed. While it pretty much sticks to the same locations as the version we get in Shelley, it's a lot different. We learn that how Freidrich's brain came to be in its strange new body and why he burns to take revenge on Frankenstein. While he's still in the lab, Freidrich "meets" Charlotte, of whom nothing remains but a toothless head (the Marquis de Sade has some ideas for her). When Freidrich escapes, he travels over a lot of Europe and meets up with vampires, Satanists (who think he's what they've been waiting for), and even a few good people. Even at that, his relationships never end well, though no fault of his own.

Zeltserman got a lot of acclaim for his horror novel The Caretaker of Lorne Field. Monster is a very different kind of book, but it's just as exciting. When awards season rolls around, this one's going to be a major contender.